I'm listening......

[Extirpated Wildlife]

I'm certainly willing to listen to the TE position. I have a lot of questions that I haven't seen yet answered anywhere that I understand the TE position on. I'm not writing this to get the answers. I'm writing this to point out that the laymen aren't going to take this position to quickly if there is no clear easy to follow answers to the questions that they typically have. TE's either have to get together and be more organized and unified under an umbrella or something. It Doesn't seem that it takes a biology lab to tell this, but maybe some parts do. I just haven't seen a web site that tells me enough.

Just throwing it out.

 

[notto]

We are not trying to convert. We are simply Christians (like yourself) who accept evolution and mainstream science as being valid and for the most part, accurate (unlike yourself). That is the TE position. If you are expecting something more than that as in a creed or secret handshake, I think you will be disappointed.

 

[shernren]

There is really no one TE position. We are just Christians who happen to believe in evolution, like notto said. To need to set up a website to showcase TE belief would be a little like needing to set up an explanatory page for "Theistic Relativity" or "Theistic Quantum Mechanics" which really doesn't make sense.

"Theistic Evolution" is basically evolution as perceived by Christians - evolution as fitted into a Christian worldview. Therefore to understand TEism you must understand evolution, and understand how it fits into a Christian worldview. To understand evolution most online explanations are adequate, accessible through Google; to understand specifically why many objections against evolution don't hold talk.origins is a good place to start.

As for how Christians put evolution into their worldviews I'd recommend Kenneth Miller and his "Finding Darwin's God", of which an extract-essay can be found online. Also Brian McLaren's "The Story We Find Ourselves In" has a good section on how evolution fits into the picture of God and His relationship with creation and the world.

In any case, there is a wide evolutionist spectrum, just as there is a wide creationist spectrum. Just the other day I saw a reply from AiG to William Dembski that honestly shocked me, considering how much the ID position can do for YECism. It's easy to think that AiG represents the YEC position, but in actual fact there are many other organizations that also work in that direction and which frankly disagree with them on many things - most notably when they criticised Dembski for believing in an old earth and conflated that with a belief in materialism (as if you can do science any other way!).

If there really was a big TE site, we'd have to settle beforehand a lot of issues like:

- Who was Adam? Was/is he a fully mythical representation of humanity in general, a mythical representation of the first human, or a literal first human male?
- What was the Garden of Eden? Was it an actual geographical location or a stylized representation of initial perfection?
- What about Cain and Abel?
- The Flood? Was there really one locally intensive and devastating flood, or was it an amalgation of orally transmitted tales of flood taking on mythical proportions for river-valley dwellers?

etc. etc. etc.

Just feel free to ask, kay. That was how I started as a TE too.

 

[Extirpated Wildlife]

shemren,

I can at least see how the view of evolution is plausible. But you are right that there would be a need to have a answer to those issues. And maybe that is where my biggest beef with TEs dwell within. I don't hear the answers to those and more questions or maybe they are not unified enough for me to understand a TE position on those questions.

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

shemren,

I can at least see how the view of evolution is plausible. But you are right that there would be a need to have a answer to those issues. And maybe that is where my biggest beef with TEs dwell within. I don't hear the answers to those and more questions or maybe they are not unified enough for me to understand a TE position on those questions.

To a certain extent, the TE questions to a lot of these questions are similar to Creationist answers to these questions. A lot of the theological discussion of Genesis is not dependent on whether Genesis is a history.

 

[Didaskomenos]

I think the issue is that TE is not doctrine per se. A TE is less someone who believes a certain thing than someone who doesn't believe something - namely, that the creation account is history. At least as far as I'm concerned, the acceptance of evolution is simply the default when we decide we don't take the Bible's creation account as a historical account; for answers about science, we as the scientists, who direct us to the theory of evolution. The theological ramifications of a non-historical reading of the Creation account (or the Flood account) cannot be extracted from the idea of theistic evolution, since that belief is more of a starting point than a full-fledged doctrine.

 

[shernren]

I think the issue is that TE is not doctrine per se.

While I would agree with you, it seems to me that YECism often comes with a certain package of doctrines and TEism with an opposing set of doctrines. For me the biggest "doctrinal" difference is that YECs seem to have a rather segmented view of reality - there is this part in which God meddles and does things scientists can't explain and there is this other part which scientists can explain and which doesn't really need God very much after all. Because of that kind of mental compartmentalization it often seems like they are more comfortable with a world where certain crucial things (life, biodiversity, the human difference) can never possibly be explained through science that would "usurp God's sovereignty".

TEs on the other hand seem to lack that kind of dichotomic view looking at all nature as being directed and moved by God. Science is simply a matter of understanding the rules God pleased to run the universe by; just because we understand something doesn't make it any less God's handiwork.

Extirpated, anything else you want to know?

 

[Extirpated Wildlife]

I'm actually listening a little more, because I have learned some things that hold to what I believed as a christian but demonstrate that God could use a an old earth.

But I don't know about macro evolution. Personally, I'm still thinking that people on crack believe that stuff, but if people can give evidence for that, I can maybe see it. I just don't think people will be able to prove macro evolution. I believe it is only in theory only.

 

[ebia]

There is no distinction - "macro" evolution is just lots of "micro" evolution. It's like saying "I accept small numbers like 10 and 100 exist because I can count to that, but I don't believe 10^36 exists because no-one has counted that high."

 

[Extirpated Wildlife]

Yes, there is. Your saying in macro evolution that a walrus could evolve into a dog.

 

[notto]

Yes, there is. Your saying in macro evolution that a walrus could evolve into a dog.

The mechanisms that drive variation and evolution within a species (micro-evolution) and those that lead to speciation (macro-evolution) are exactly the same.

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Yes, there is. Your saying in macro evolution that a walrus could evolve into a dog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_evolution

Look at the gradual change in the pictures. The big changes don't look so big when one realizes that there are many intermediate steps.

 

[ebia]

Yes, there is. Your saying in macro evolution that a walrus could evolve into a dog.

No I'm not. A walrus could not evolve into a dog. Over a long enough time a population of walruses could evolve into something quite different, but it won't be a dog and it won't a single walrus doing the evolving.

Put together enough small changes and you get a big change. There are no boundaries to cross or not cross.

 

[gluadys]

Yes, there is. Your saying in macro evolution that a walrus could evolve into a dog.

One of the most puzzling things for someone trying to understand macro-evolution is why scientists affirm that mammals did evolve from reptiles and at the same time say a walrus will never evolve into a dog. After all a walrus is already more like a dog than a reptile is, so why not?

The answer to this puzzle is the study of phylogeny--which is basically the study of the history of evolution as distinct from figuring out how evolution happens.

Evolution does mean change in species. But which changes can occur are constrained by the changes of the past. It is not possible for any species to become any other species or even any other sort of species. The options for change in any species are limited by the past history of the species lineage.

The evidence does show that one group of ancient reptiles (therapsids) did evolve into mammals. Not all of them. But changes kept occuring within that lineage such that at some point they had more mammalian than reptilian characteristics.

This does not mean that any other reptiles did, can or ever will become mammals. Nor does it mean that any mammals can ever become reptiles.

Walruses will never become dogs or vice versa. However, both are derived from a carnivorous mammalian ancester that was neither a walrus nor a dog. Some of the far distant descendants of walruses may be different enough from today's species that scientists of the future will give them a different name. But they will still be recognized as descendants of walruses. Ditto for dogs.

The image of the branching bush (aka the nested hierarchy) is crucial to understanding the pathways evolution has taken in the past and the constraints which limit evolution in the present and future.

Species change is not a free-for-all whereby anything has unlimited capacity to become something else. There are rules that limit the options. But within those rules the extent of bio-diversity past and present are still truly amazing.

Most of this does not require faith, but simply a good acquaintance with phylogeny and the evidence in which it is grounded. Two sites I recommend are
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/historyoflife/histoflife.html
and
http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html

Here is a commentary specifically on human evolution.
http://home.comcast.net/~aronra/Taxonomy.html

 

[lismore]

. We are just Christians who happen to believe in evolution, like notto said.
.

hello

'Christian' and 'evolution' sometimes seem to be strange bedfellows.

Evolution would suggest there was death before Adam: A christian believes it was through Adam's fall that sin and death entered the world= No sin and no death before adam. This is part of the gospel and the work of Jesus Christ. As in adam all have sinned so in Christ all have been made alive.

Jesus is described in the NT as the literal last adam: how can he be if there is no literal first adam.

Jesus suffered and died on a cross to redeem us from Adam's fall. He suffered literal hideous torture for an allegorical fall?

If we are not redeemed we are still dead in our sins.

The bible clearly states that the time frames required for evolution just do not exist. If God's word is false on this, then chances are its false elsewhere?

.

If there really was a big TE site, we'd have to settle beforehand a lot of issues like:

- Who was Adam? Was/is he a fully mythical representation of humanity in general, a mythical representation of the first human, or a literal first human male?
- What was the Garden of Eden? Was it an actual geographical location or a stylized representation of initial perfection?
- What about Cain and Abel?
- The Flood? Was there really one locally intensive and devastating flood, or was it an amalgation of orally transmitted tales of flood taking on mythical proportions for river-valley dwellers?

etc. etc. etc.

Just feel free to ask, kay. That was how I started as a TE too.

You'd also have to set a point in the bible to be the borderline between myth and absolute truth.

 

[lismore]

Yes, there is. Your saying in macro evolution that a walrus could evolve into a dog.

Yes but the changes occurr so gradually and are so many mutations over such a long period that it wouldnt leave any evidence except that walruses would not exist any more because they were less fit to be walruses than a half dog half walrus.

How could a half bird be a better bird than a real bird?

 

[Willtor]

hello

'Christian' and 'evolution' sometimes seem to be strange bedfellows.

Evolution would suggest there was death before Adam: A christian believes it was through Adam's fall that sin and death entered the world= No sin and no death before adam. This is part of the gospel and the work of Jesus Christ. As in adam all have sinned so in Christ all have been made alive.

Evolution would require that there was death before Adam. But if there was a man, or community of men, to whom God endowed with eternal life, then they would not die until they turned away from Him.

As for the theological aspect of Genesis, I would highly recommend "Ethics" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He provides a profound understanding of origins.

Jesus is described in the NT as the literal last adam: how can he be if there is no literal first adam.

Jesus suffered and died on a cross to redeem us from Adam's fall. He suffered literal hideous torture for an allegorical fall?

Again, do some theological reading. Some peoples' interpretations of Genesis don't fit your categories.

If we are not redeemed we are still dead in our sins.

Tru dat.

The bible clearly states that the time frames required for evolution just do not exist. If God's word is false on this, then chances are its false elsewhere?

You are the only one who has mentioned the possibility that the Bible might be false. If it is false, then I am gravely mistaken in my beliefs. But just because it is true does not mean that you or I have understood it as it is intended.

You'd also have to set a point in the bible to be the borderline between myth and absolute truth.

No I wouldn't.

 

[Willtor]

Yes but the changes occurr so gradually and are so many mutations over such a long period that it wouldnt leave any evidence except that walruses would not exist any more because they were less fit to be walruses than a half dog half walrus.

How could a half bird be a better bird than a real bird?

You make it sound like Evolution proposes the existence of griffins or some such. Take the advice of other posters who have encouraged you to look at tree diagrams.

 

[The Lady Kate]

Jesus is described in the NT as the literal last adam: how can he be if there is no literal first adam.

Where do you get "literal"? Perhaps Paul was being poetic.

Jesus suffered and died on a cross to redeem us from Adam's fall. He suffered literal hideous torture for an allegorical fall?

Precisely. man is separated from God through sin. Genesis seeks to explain the origin of the separation. Whether Genesis is literal or allegorical, the fact remains that we are separated... and Jesus' suffering reconciles that.

If we are not redeemed we are still dead in our sins.

So who says we're not redeemed?

The bible clearly states that the time frames required for evolution just do not exist.

The Bible "clearly states" no such thing. James Ussher states it. If you want to elevate Ussher to the status of inspired prophet, that's your choice.

If God's word is false on this, then chances are its false elsewhere?

If it is... and there's no reason to believe it's not (when read properly), then I suppose we're simply have to have faith that God's word is not false on those things we need to know in order for our salvation.

I know I'm not afrad of a little faith...

You'd also have to set a point in the bible to be the borderline between myth and absolute truth.

And what's wrong with that? Haven't the YECs done the exact same thing? Isn't the only real issue between YECs and TEs where that borderline is?

 

[gluadys]

hello

'Christian' and 'evolution' sometimes seem to be strange bedfellows.

Evolution would suggest there was death before Adam:

Where does scripture suggest there was no bacterial, plant or animal death before Adam? How could Eden have been a functioning eco-system without death?

A christian believes it was through Adam's fall that sin and death entered the world= No sin and no death before adam. This is part of the gospel and the work of Jesus Christ. As in adam all have sinned so in Christ all have been made alive.

That's no problem for a theistic evolutionist. Just depends on what is meant by adam.

Jesus is described in the NT as the literal last adam: how can he be if there is no literal first adam.

Where does it say Paul is speaking literally in this passage? Sounds to me that he is speaking in terms of philosophy, using 'adam' and 'christ' as forms in the Platonic sense. That would make a lot of sense since he is writing to people in Rome who would be familiar with the concept of form.

Jesus suffered and died on a cross to redeem us from Adam's fall. He suffered literal hideous torture for an allegorical fall?

No one is saying the fall is allegorical. It is the story that tells us about the fall that is non-literal. The fall itself is real.

The bible clearly states that the time frames required for evolution just do not exist.

Where?

You'd also have to set a point in the bible to be the borderline between myth and absolute truth.

Why? Are you suggesting that myth cannot be absolute truth? Sometimes myth is more true than fact.